I saw a youtube comparing two drives-- I thi it was between two Seagate editions in 2Tb.
The screens shown had a software tool with dial (no real visible) and various performance readings.

What is that software? It was not refrenced that I could hear during the clip.

Here a good list of all well know:
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/measure-act ... r-windows/

Oops maybe not what you are looking for, if for two drives simultaneously...
Or did you mean monitoring them?

Ok I'll go through the list. Thanks

While my defective Seagate is being replaced I read the article from Raymond today.

Some good pick in there. I was looking for a whole check and there seems to be the WD Tools one and one other one that does whole disk.

Would HDD Low Level Format be worthwhile to performs a crunch test or on a new drive or
leave that alone? I saw someplace that Low Level should be used with caution, though I have used HDD Guru LLF often and I bought the upgrade. I never got to test it as the drive failed. First DOA for all practical purpoeses I ever received.

Wish me luck with the replacement.

thanks for the lead on tools.

HDDLLF is harmless for a drive, your drive will die anyway soon if it do not success it.

I always test a drive before using it, by full writing it and then full reading it at least.
I done those scans with Victoria, you can find the last version here https://www.usbdev.ru/files/victoria/

Ok that's good advice.

By extension then can I assume all those other programs like "Anvil" etc are harmless tests
for an HD without problems?

I don't want to have to go down into the weeds with this. I'm not a professional bench tester.

While doing full write/read scans is really harmless and have to be passed with success. (head is slowly moving around the platter)
It is not totally the case for bench tests in my opinion, because those tests seems like a torture.
But your drive have to also success passing them to simulate hard situation, just I recommend you not passing hours benching your drive.

Those bench tests are finally rarely useful, you eventually do it one time when you get the drive and that's all. (the HDTune bench can serve you to see your access time)

Anyway you will spot if your drive have problems during the Victoria scans, it will also show you at how speed it write/read, so no others tools are needed to see if your drive is malfunctioning.

Keep an eye on your drive temp, not too hot and not too cold, ideal temp is surely around 40°C for a drive. (mines variate from 35 idle in winter and 45 very busy in summer, for many years)
But drives seems very resistant to high temp like 50, at least when they are not tortured. (a myth even claim they are working better at high temp, this perhaps because of the Ohm law and the influence of the temperature on it)

ok, what you said. ;-)

I haven't received my replacement yet. Will need to let it warm up for a week.
Then I'll be able to use my new paid for improved Low Level Format prog from HDD Guru.
I'm really curious as to how much difference in time there is and why so with the unlocked
version.

Just continuing on this bench test of thr re[lacement drive.
I have the replaced drive and things are going better:

Ran the Format and MBR in Win7 Admin.

Running Low Level Format now. I see that the mb/s is about double the read
and write speed from Low Level Format tool which is not registered for the
upgrade fee.

I'll be curious to see after what looks like 100 mins of Low Level format if the
new Seagate is still in the acceptable temp range viewed in CrystalDiskMark or
Hard Disk Sentinel.

These are not hot plug devices, but I did make the error of replugging to the
Seagate under test to one of my rigs that was not shut down: just the PSU plug.
It seems to have recovered from that. I don't make the error often but it always
makes me nervous. In this case no data of any kind was on it.

Do the full write with HDDLLF! Uncheck "quick wipe" that just remove partition and MBR.
HDDLLF will only write your drive and not read anything... so next do a full read with another soft.

If hotplug is not supported by your hardware/OS/driver, you can still do it "with safety" by disabling SATA channels in the Windows Device Manager before unplug/plug, and then re-enable those channels. Also avoid same cable from your PSU for more than one drive when doing that.

I have re-visited the myth, and I finally think it is wrong, so don't let your drive going too much on high temp. (45°C seems the safe max to me)
This myth come from the high temp preference when doing drive selfscan, and I finally think that it is for the reverse, so to put the drive in the worst state to right detect all potential problems.
I'm interested if someone have some true infos about that...

Would I sound stupid or lame to ask what your crossword means in the Avatar? :-/

Thanks for reply. I think a program like Seatools (which I have around someplace)
can do the drive writer test.

It means my first hdd scan! very old school

bad block, ha, ha.

Ok if that's it, I understand. ;-)

It made me think to ask what is the latest wisdom on defrag and bad sector tools? Freeware, natch.

I am having more problems with this than is reasonable.
I ran the Seatools Long test. It says ok.

Then I went to put a Win7 install to the drive from DVD.

I am locked out of doing so. The message I recall is some sort of boot MGR corrupted
Error.

All I can think of to do is run the repair disk and at CMD run the bootmgr fix boot
and fix mbr.

While waiting ofr any repsonse I am going to try that.

What can possibly creat these problems from a Seatools self test?

I hooked it up to the box that ran the SEatools and Hard Disk Sentinel says it's Perfect.
I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Anyway continuing and trying to get an OS installed prior to doing any clone jobs
which take all night.

These posts are me thinking out loud. I may find a solution, I may not....